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"For six years, I published a magazine all about myself," says fiction writer and zine publisher Pagan Kennedy in the introduction to her book Zine: How I Spent Six Years of My Life in the Underground and Finally . . . Found Myself . . . I Think.
In it, I documented everything from my dreadlock hair care tips to the antics of my roommate's pet pig to my travails as a struggling fiction writer. Pagan's Head (as the magazine came to be known) was just a little Xeroxed, stapled-together thing that I handed out to friends and acquaintances - but it changed my life. I began publishing it in an effort to procrastinate, to trick people into liking me, to get dates, to turn myself into a star, and to transform my boring life into an epic story. And the scary thing was, it worked. Pagan Kennedy is a zine pioneer. She is talented, cheeky, and not afraid to let the world in. Her (now out of print) zine Pagan's Head was one of the first popular girl zines in the U.S. You can't get Pagan's Head anymore (unless you're lucky and run across an old, tattered copy), but at the end of the six year run, Pagan published a collection of writings from her zine entitled Pagan Kennedy's Living: A Handbook for Maturing Hipsters (softcover, 128 pages). With tips on such areas as Pregnancy, Work (QIP = "Quitting In Place"), Decorating, and Sex, this is a consummate guide to social and survival skills for Gen Exers fast approaching or surpassing thirty. Kennedy is also a fiction writer and critic. Stripping, is a well-written and honest collection of short stories. Spinsters is a novel set in the early sixties about two aging sisters who hit the road together. Her most recent novel is called The Exes, named thus because each member of the band has slept with at least one other person in the group. I just read this one a couple of months ago and was really impressed by the way it was structured. There are four sections, each written in the point of view of one of the four members of the band. Great story too, sort of an expose of the underground music scene in Boston. Kennedy's cultural criticism book, Platforms: A Microwaved Cultural Chronicle of the 70s is now out of print, but most used book stores (such as Powell's on the Net) can find you a copy. This "guerrilla nostalgia book" tells all about the decade that brought us Boo Berry, BJ and the Bear, space food, Chico and the Man, bean bag chairs, and earth shoes.
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The copyright of the article Zine Queen Pagan Kennedy in Zines is owned by . Permission to republish Zine Queen Pagan Kennedy in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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